Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

The first game, Arkham Asylum, already raised the bar for other superhero games to follow but 'City' raised it further!

This sequel retains the feeling of the first game but expands itself. City's wider scope allows the player to experience joyous side quests as well as complete the main campaign. Once again, The Joker is free and is set to cause chaos but other famous villains such as Catwoman, Penguin and Mr. Freeze join in on the fun to either play with Batman or kill him.

Various incarnations of Batman elements are present here. You have the Christopher Nolan-esque Gotham City and Batman mixed with a hybrid Joker that is made up from both the 1960's television show, Batman 1989 and the latest, The Dark Knight in terms of his personality and hard edge.

The inclusion of Mr. Freeze does somewhat reduce the maturity of the game as does Penguin, but the idea to have Penguin throw a few curse words only moderately works to seek to make him fit in the world that the game sets.

The controls are like the original game in that the fighting mechanism is primarily button mashing. But this never gets old, and with the vast array of weapons and moves that Batman can execute (the game does choose many of your moves), it was a wise choice to not create a complicated control scheme.

Gliding over Gotham is fun and a great way to get around even though I don't feel that the world is as big as they could have made it. In fact, Gotham can feel quite small! You will find getting around is quick and easy.

One criticism is that one of the side quests, titled Watcher In The Wings, ultimately comes to an empty conclusion that only teases the player into waiting for the next sequel to continue the story of that quest. I'm not sure about anybody else but I like a decent pay off when the game asks me to spend time looking for and decipher puzzles and symbols.

Another negative is the Riddler quest. In the first game, it was a simple "find the trophies" mission but in this one you need to solve riddles and participate in rather complicated activities, which a lot of the time have time limits, to unlock them. It all felt a little too much for my liking. I think I have only ever attempted to try it once and gave up pretty shortly after I started. But maybe I just don't have the patience for it.

The soundtrack is actually pretty great and fits the game very well. It appropriately symbolizes the legend of Batman and you never think it is some crappy generic music they just threw in. You will know they took their time to construct a suitable score to go with the game they were making.

Length of the campaign is a bit short and could probably be completed in a day, especially in Easy Difficulty, if one has nothing else to do. But the game packs plenty of replay value and I have gone back to complete the campaign many times. The one day completion would just be to compete the campaign itself, not any of the side quests which attempt to grab your attention along the way.

The bottom line is that this is a game that you should not walk by if you come across it. Even if you are not a Batman fan, I would bet that you would still gain tons of enjoyment from it.

I'm still waiting for another superhero game to surpass it even though it's only just been over a year. I'm thinking that the next one will raise the bar even more, further making it difficult for competitors to try.

Buy it.